Editorial Policies

Peer Review Process

The acceptance criterion for Collabra: Psychology is scientific, methodological, and ethical rigor. While Collabra: Psychology editors and reviewers do not attempt to predict a submission’s impact to the field, nor employ any topic bias in accepting articles, they will check for rigorously and transparently conducted, statistically sound, adequately powered, and fairly analyzed research worthy of inclusion in the scholarly record. This is a focus on more objective acceptance criteria and the bar is set high.

Specific requirements for transparency and openness are detailed below.

Action Editors at Collabra: Psychology have the choice to:

• Desk reject a manuscript without soliciting external reviewers.
• Send the submission out for peer-review. Typically, two independent reviews are requested. However, action editors may opt to go for one reviewer (for instance, if specific expertise of the reviewer is sought, or if the action editor is already heavily leaning towards a decision) or they may go for three of more reviewers (for instance, if the action editor judges that the manuscript is a contentious perspective/opinion piece).

Collabra: Psychology operates 2 types of peer-review (but also see the information about open review, and streamlined review, directly below):

• Double-blind peer review process, meaning that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process.
• Non-blind peer-review, meaning that reviewers can sign their reviews.

Open Peer Review

Whether double-blind or non-blind, Collabra:Psychology utilizes an open peer review process. This means that the correspondence and comments during the review process will be openly available in a single document along with the published article, if accepted. This is an unedited output of the comments on the peer review form and other interactions such as the author response letter, excluding any confidential comments to the editor by a reviewer. If the reviewer has signed his/her review, his/her identity will also be openly available. 

Streamlined Review

Authors whose articles have been rejected within the previous 365 days from other journals for reasons that are not due to lack of scientific, methodological, or ethical rigor are welcome to submit prior reviews and decision letters along with their submission, and request a streamlined review in their cover letter. (Common reasons for such rejections are due to perceived future impact, being out of scope, curation of topics, policies regarding numbers of studies, etc.)

Authors should:

• Indicate clearly in their cover letter that they are requesting streamlined review. (This is in addition to the other standard items required in the cover letter, listed here.)
• Clearly state from which journal the article was rejected.
• Specifically describe the nature of any changes that were made, or not made, to the manuscript in response to the prior set of reviews, just as they would normally do when submitting a revised manuscript. (Although the author is not obligated to revise the manuscript in response to the prior set of reviews, the authors should carefully consider the content of the reviews and to make those changes with which they agree prior to requesting streamlined review.)
• Include a copy of the previous editor's action letter along with copies of all of the written reviews from the prior submission. If the reviewers signed their reviews, this information should also be passed to Collabra: Psychology. These materials must be submitted in their original form; any alteration of these materials will cause the manuscript to be returned without review. These can be uploaded as supplementary files (after any article items) or attached. If they are not available in their original form but need to be copied/pasted, or otherwise provided, the editor or publisher will need to verify the information with the previous editor.
• Indicate whether the previous editors (and reviewers, if they signed their reviews and are known) may have given their permission for their comments to be openly available at Collabra: Psychology, if the submission is accepted.

Please note that at any time the editor or publisher at Collabra: Psychology may enter into correspondence with the previous editors for verification of information and any permissions.

Action Editors at Collabra: Psychology have the choice to:

• Seek no further reviewers, and make the decision based on the ported reviews and information.
• Make the decision based on the ported reviews and one more invited reviewer.
• Send the submission out for regular review, if s/he decides the ported reviews and information are not sufficient to make a decision.
• Reject the submission (either with or without additional reviews).

If accepted and published, an article that has undergone streamlined review will always have an open decision letter by the Collabra: Psychology Action Editor, detailing how they made their decision and on what information it was based, for transparency. Any ported reviews from another journal will only be made open if there is permission from the previous editor and reviewers (and the reviewers would only be known if they signed their original reviews).

Any additional reviews by Collabra: Psychology reviewers will be open if the author chooses open peer review, as for a regularly submitted article.

Focus and Scope

Collabra: Psychology has 7 sections representing the broad field of psychology, and a highlighted focus area of “Methodology and Research Practice.”

• Cognitive Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Personality Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Organizational Behavior
• Methodology and Research Practice

The acceptance criterion for Collabra: Psychology is scientific, methodological, and ethical rigor. While Collabra: Psychology editors and reviewers do not attempt to predict a submission’s impact to the field, nor employ any topic bias in accepting articles, they will check for rigorously and transparently conducted, statistically sound, adequately powered, and fairly analyzed research worthy of inclusion in the scholarly record. This is a focus on more objective acceptance criteria, and the bar is set high.

Collabra: Psychology supports the principles of Open Science, including a mandatory open data policy, and an option for authors to choose open peer review. We strongly encourage pre-registration of studies and pre-analysis plans.

Transparency and Openness Policy

Collabra: Psychology bases its transparency and openness policy on the standards in the Transparency and Openness Promotion (“TOP”) Guidelines faciliated by the Center for Open Science, available at https://cos.io/top/#TOP, and certain guidelines developed by the Association for Psychological Science.

Citation Standards

All data, program code, and other methods must be appropriately cited. Such materials are recognized as original intellectual contributions and afforded recognition through citation.

1. All data sets and program code used in a publication must be cited in the text and listed in the reference section.
2. References for data sets and program code must include a persistent identifier, such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Persistent identifiers ensure future access to unique published digital objects, such as a text or data set. Persistent identifiers are assigned to data sets by digital archives, such as institutional repositories and partners in the Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS). 
3. Data set citation example: Campbell, Angus, and Robert L. Kahn. American National Election Study, 1948. ICPSR07218-v3. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1999. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07218.v3

Open Data, Open Analytic Methods (Code), and Research Materials Transparency

Data, and also methods used in the analysis, and materials used to conduct the research must be clearly and precisely documented, and be maximally available to any researcher for purposes of reproducing the results or replicating the procedure.

Authors using original data must make the data available at a trusted digital repository. (Note: If all data required to reproduce the reported analyses appears in the article text, tables, and figures then it does not also need to be posted to a repository.)

Trusted repositories adhere to policies that make data discoverable, accessible, usable, and preserved for the long term. Trusted repositories also assign unique and persistent identifiers. Author maintained websites are not compliant with this requirement, but many university libraries have established institutional repositories that provide long-term and stable accessibility to scholarly data. We encourage authors to check with their home institutions if an appropriate subject-based public archive is not available.

Dissemination of data, methods, and materials can be delayed until article publication, as long as reviewers have adequate access. Under exceptional circumstances, editors may grant an embargo of the public release of data for up to one year after publication.

Authors will be requested to provide a data accessibility statement with their submissions (see Guide for Authors for full details), listing where each dataset is or will be archived and including accession numbers or DOIs. Along with data, authors should:

1. include all variables, treatment conditions, and observations described in the manuscript. 
2. provide a full account of the procedures used to collect, preprocess, clean, or generate the data. 
3. provide program code, scripts, codebooks, and other documentation sufficient to precisely reproduce all published results. 
4. provide research materials and description of procedures necessary to conduct an independent replication of the research.

Authors reusing data available from public repositories must provide program code, scripts for statistical packages, and other documentation sufficient to allow an informed researcher to precisely reproduce all published results.

In certain cases some or all data or materials cannot be shared for legal or ethical reasons. In such cases, authors must inform the editors at the time of submission. This will be taken into account during the review process. Authors are encouraged to anticipate data and material sharing at the beginning of their projects to provide for these circumstances. It is understood that in some cases access will be provided under restrictions to protect confidential or proprietary information. Editors may grant exceptions to data and material access requirements provided authors:

1. explain the restrictions on the dataset or materials and how they preclude public access. 
2. provide a public description of the steps others should follow to request access to the data or materials. 
3. provide software and other documentation that will precisely reproduce all published results. 
4. provide access to all data and materials for which the constraints do not apply.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that their articles continue to meet these conditions. Failure to do so may lead to an editorial expression of concern or retraction of the article.

Design and Analysis Transparency in psychology research

Authors are required to follow the standards for disclosing key aspects of the research design and data analysis in their Methods sections, which standards were developed by the Association for Psychological Science. In summary, this includes disclosure of:

1. any data exclusions 
2. all of the conditions/groups tested 
3. all of the dependent variables or measures collected for each study reported in the submitted manuscript.

Preregistration of Studies and Analysis Plans

Collabra: Psychology encourages, but does not require, preregistration of studies.

Preregistration of studies involves registering the study design, variables, and treatment conditions prior to conducting research. Including an analysis plan involves specification of sequence of analyses or the statistical model that will be reported.

Authors should state in the Acknowledgements section whether the conducted research was preregistered with an analysis plan in an independent, institutional registry (e.g., http://clinicaltrials.gov/, http://openscienceframework.org/, http://egap.org/design-registration/, http://ridie.3ieimpact.org/, http://aspredicted.org/) and that the preregistration adheres to the disclosure requirements of the institutional registry.

If the conducted research was preregistered, authors must provide links to the time-stamped pre-registration(s) at the institutional registry.

Replication

Collabra: Psychology welcomes submissions of replication studies.

Thanks and Acknowledgements

Collabra: Psychology acknowledges the work of the Center for Open Science, and the Association for Psychological Science, in developing best practices and policies in transparency and openness, and for making such work available to use and repurpose at other journals.

Publication Ethics

Collabra: Psychology supports the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and follows its guidelines for dealing with potential cases of misconduct. We expect our authors to comply with best practices in publication ethics, particularly with respect to authorship, conflict of interest, compliance with standards of research ethics, redundant publication, figure manipulation, plagiarism, and dual submission.

Research published in Collabra: Psychology must conforms to Standard 8 of the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (Although please note that some of our standards, e.g. data sharing, are more rigorous.)

When Senior Editors and Editors are authors

From time to time, because Collabra: Psychology is a rigorous, broad journal, affiliated with a society, Senior Editors and Editors may choose to submit their work to the journal as the most appropriate venue. First and foremost, and as a matter of course, no Senior Editor, or Editor, who are also authors will ever see or be able to make or influence a decision on their paper, and this will also be declared in the manuscript, if it is eventually accepted and published.

If an Editor is an author, then the Senior Editor will ensure that the paper is not assigned to them, but is assigned to another handling Editor, subject to the same requirements around conflicts of interests as with any submission. All sections have a number of handling Editors to choose from, and care has been taken to ensure they are from different institutions, communities, and countries.

If a Senior Editor is an author, then an alternative Senior Editor will stand in on the submission, and assign it to an appropriate handling Editor. This stand-in Senior Editor, with the help of the Managing Editor, will ensure that the assigned handling Editor is appropriate.

In either case, if there is not an appropriate handling Editor available on the journal’s board (due to specific expertise, or potential conflicts of interest) the Senior Editor and Managing Editor will seek an ad hoc handling Editor from outside of the journal’s editorial board.

Whenever a Senior Editor submits to the journal, we will require that open review is chosen, so that the full review history will always be available along with the article, if the article is eventually accepted.

Whoever the authors are at Collabra: Psychology, readers can always see editorship declarations in the article, the names of the Senior Editor and handling Editor, and, in many cases, the full review correspondence if the authors chose open review.

Appeals Process

(originally based on http://www.apa.org/pubs/authors/appeals.aspx)

If your manuscript is rejected, and if you believe a pertinent point was overlooked or misunderstood by the reviewers or handling editor, you may appeal the editorial decision by contacting the handling editor and senior editor together, via the Editorial Office at [email protected], which will forward the appeal to both editors.

The editors will examine the review correspondence, may consult with the reviewers, and may include other relevant reviewers in the process at their discretion. They will communicate their response directly with you.

If you appeal to the editors and are not satisfied with their response, the next step in the appeal procedure is to contact the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) publications committee (again, via the Editorial Office at [email protected]).

A relevant member of the publications committee will examine the review correspondence, may consult with the senior editor, handling editor, and/or reviewers, and may include other relevant reviewers (e.g. subject experts) in the process at the committee’s discretion. The decision of the SIPS publications committee (as communicated by the Chair of the committee) will be final.

Corrections and Additions

Amendments to published articles will be made only if they affect the integrity and accuracy of the scholarly record. Formal notifications will be published on the Collabra: Psychology website, falling into one of two categories:

• Correction: An error introduced by the publisher OR the author(s) (and this will be indicated in the explanatory text) that affects the integrity of the scholarly record, the reputation of the authors, or the reputation of the journal. (A "correction" at this journal covers both items traditionally called a “corrigendum” or an “erratum”.)
• Retraction: Withdrawal of a published paper due to invalid results or conclusions. All authors of a paper must sign a retraction request, indicating the error and describing how it affects the paper’s conclusions. If authors are not in unanimous agreement in requesting a retraction, the pertinent Senior Editor will consult the handling Editor(s) and, as necessary, external reviewers and apply the category of amendment that appears most appropriate, indicating dissenting authors in the text of the published amendment.
• Expression of Concern: While the publishing community’s opinion on the use of an Expression of Concern is still under discussion (please refer here for the latest information) the journal reserves the right to consider using it on a case-by-case basis for instances involving, but not limited to: 1) material but inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct, which may or may not be still under investigation; 2) evidence of unreliable findings but with no insitution or other organization willing or able to investigate the case; 3) evidence of an error, or omission of pertinent information, in the article or in the linked open data/materials, that should be fixed but has not been due to author unwillingness or unresponsiveness. In most cases an Expression of Concern would lead to either a positive resolution (via a notice) OR a retraction.

Section Policies